Not, actually, about her

Peggy Noonan pens a reflection in the WSJ on the passing of Margaret Thatcher to which anyone who has been to the funeral of a notable figure can relate:

Thatcher’s funeral was striking in that it was not, actually, about her. It was about what she thought it important for the mourners to know. The readings were about the fact of God, the gift of Christ, and the necessity of loving your country and working for its betterment. There were no long eulogies. In a friendly and relatively brief address, the bishop of London lauded her kindness and character. No funeral of an American leader would ever be like that: The dead American would be the star, with God in the position of yet another mourner who’d miss his leadership.

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2 Responses to “Not, actually, about her”

After watching the Peter Robinson/John O’Sullivan video on Thatcher no one should be surprised. According to O’Sullivan, she thought the problems with Britain in 1979, when she was elected Prime Minister, were moral, not economic. We can only pray that we in the States come to the same understanding.

I was traveling in France in 1990 when Thatcher was being condemned in Parliament by her own party. As I listened to BBC in the car I was shocked by what I heard on the radio. But Churchill was rubbished–I love that word–in the same way when he was Prime Minister after WW2. When we become content, we turn on those who have been largely responsible for our contentment. We fall in love once again with the invertebrates who tickle our ears with what we want hear.